by Faye Sonja
The struggle was real…
She glanced at her pocket watch as the bartender finally brought her the coffee. She had a break in a few minutes and she was going to walk as slowly as possible to the seething man with his coffee, so by the time she served him, she could take her much needed break.
“Jane!” Ryan, the other server called to her from the kitchen door. He pointed to his watch and she ignored him. He was the head server, some inflated position designed to make the worker bees feel like they were actually aspiring for greatness. She wasn’t fooled by the very capitalistic position. She had been saving for nearly a year to get out of this dump, and she was not going to stay long enough for a head strong, head server to make much of a difference.
“Here you go sir,” she mustered up a smile and placed the coffee cup in front of the man who was going bald, but his face didn’t match up to a man of balding age. Maybe it was all that grumpiness that was eating away at his hairline?
“About time,” he muttered. “Service in this place gets worse every time I come here. I need to make an official complaint.”
She couldn’t resist. “You can take up any issue you like with Ryan over there,” she said with a bright smile pointing to the head server standing at the counter. To make her point clear, she even smiled as she pointed at Ryan, hoping he would just do his job and appease the man.
“Hello,” the man in the million dollar suit said to her as she passed him. “Can I place an order?”
He had manners and so she wouldn’t be mean. “Just a minute I will get someone to serve you,” she said.
He nodded his thanks and went back to the menu. His intense stare told her that he was either clearly hungry, or troubled by something. She hesitated in walking away realizing somehow that it was more the latter than the former. It made her want to ask him what was wrong, but her empathetic ways had only ever caused her problems so she decided against it.
“Ryan, there is a man right by the door needing to be served,” she said to him as she walked through the kitchen and out the backdoor, not waiting to hear his response.
The warm summer air greeted her and she smiled, taking a moment to close her eyes and inhale. When she was able she wanted nothing more than to move to someplace else. After John’s death she had had to give up the peaceful little cottage in the hills for the flat lands where she could scrape together what little work she could to keep food on her table. Nature gave her a kind of zest to live, but here in the crowded and bustling neighborhoods of Rock County, nature was torn away from her senses by the hustle and bustle and the stench of garbage and dirt in the air. In the distance an annoying dog barked constantly, and a woman screamed curses for him to keep quiet in a voice that would peel the paint off the walls.
She sighed and wished for the weekend to draw close where she would disappear to her cottage for two days of peace and quiet. It made her wonder why in heaven’s name the white man in the expensive suit, who looked, spoke and smelled like money would ever find himself in a place such as this.
One of life’s many inexplicable paradoxes no doubt. She took a walk down to the train tracks that ran behind the diner and sat on the edge listening to the train that approached off in the distance. Someday she was going to hop on one of them and ride it away from this misery that had become her life.
"Dreaming again?" Alex asked from behind her and she all but jumped out of her skin. She had been so lost in thought she had not heard the woman approaching with her daughter, Jemma.
"We brought you pie, Mama!" Jemma said with such glee, handing it over to her mother with a smile.
"Can you watch her while I go by the inn tonight and do a load of wash?" She asked Alex who had become a savior to her.
"Sure! We will go see Daisy," Alex said referring to the governor's daughter who was always happy for a playmate up in the big mansion.
Alex had landed the job of a lifetime as caregiver to the little girl, but luckily, the governor and his wife were doting parents who spent evenings and weekends with their child. This gave Alex free time to watch Jemma while Jane tried to make as much money as she could.
"I really appreciate what you have done for us," she said to Alex. "I don’t know how I will ever repay you."
Alex smiled at her and pulled Jemma close. "Your friendship is enough, but Jane, maybe it is time for you to move on. It has been ten month since John..."
Her words trailed off as neither of them wanted to say the dreadful word, especially when Jemma was close by.
"I can’t think about that right now, Alex. I am barely keeping a roof over our heads; the last thing I have time for is courting. Besides, what kind of man would have a poor woman like me with a child?"
It was a good question that always came up when they had these discussions. Alex had given her three months to grieve with peace and quiet, and then shortly after had deemed it time that she moved on and tried to find herself a husband. Her heart still ached for John. She had loved him for as long as she could remember and she just could not see herself loving another man in that way.
"I have the solution to that problem," Alex interrupted her thoughts again.
"What problem?"
Rolling her eyes at Jane's hopeless reaction, the woman continued. "I think a change would do you and Jemma a lot of good. How about you become a mail order bride?"
"A, what now?" Jane asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
"You place an ad saying you are looking for a husband and in a week or so, someone will respond taking you up on the offer."
"People do such things?" She asked Alex in horror. "What happened to courting and falling in love?"
"Both are very overrated ideologies. If you are open-minded and willing to take a chance on love and it works, you will have security, and all of your money problems will cease to exist."
Jane shook her head. "No, I can’t see myself doing that. And most certainly not with Jemma. What kind of life will she have? What if the man who responds does not like my child?"
Alex sighed. "You have a home for yourself here Jane. If you travel to see this man who responds and he turns out to be less than you expect, then you come right back home. No harm done."
Jane smiled at her friend. "I know you want to help Alex, but that is not a life for me. I need to stay put and make sure my child is taken care of. I do not have the luxury of traveling across country looking for love."
She got up and noted Alex's tense silence, but she was in no mood to argue with her about becoming a bride for sale. She didn't believe in such things. It would be nice to get out of Minnesota, though. She had in fact always dreamed of moving out west where the climate was a lot more agreeable. Alex had been right about needing a change, but that was not how she wanted to bring it about.
"I will see you both tonight," she whispered in Jemma's hair as she kissed her daughter goodbye with a sad smile. Seemed these days all she had with her daughter in terms of quality time were these fleeting moments. She was watching her grow up under someone else's hand and it made her sad. Maybe if she took up Alex's idea she would find herself a fairy-tale, but she shoved the thought from her mind and instead focused on going about the life she had been dealt.
There was no use in dreaming of things that were unlikely when there were floors to be mopped, table tops to clean and a huge load of wash waiting on her at the nearby inn.
It was so sad, how life could sometimes destroy your dreams. John had promised her they would open an inn one day, now here she was scrubbing the floors in one. My how the tables had turned. She thought.
She pushed the tears back that welled up in her eyes as she watched her daughter skip away with Alex. Maybe she could turn her luck around. Little did she know that Alex would ignore her protest and place an ad in the papers that very day on her behalf. She didn't concern herself much with what happened once Alex and Jemma had left. Jane couldn't concern herself with that. She had far too much work to do.
* * *
2
Chapter TWO
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“ It was so sad, how life could
sometimes destroy your dreams …”
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A week later in Springfield,
Kansas
Byron listened to the music coming from the opera halls and decided to cancel is meeting and go there instead.
“Sir, the Jameson’s are expecting you," Gretchen told her impulsive boss as he exited the carriage.
"Go ahead Gretchen, and tell them we can meet in the opera hall or they can reschedule."
"But sir, this is the third time you have rescheduled with them."
He turned and smiled at the woman who had taken care of him since his parents died. "If they have a problem, I am sure you can handle business on my behalf like you have always done."
Byron smiled at the woman giving her a distracted kiss on the cheek as his attention was pulled away by a lovely woman walking by him. He tipped his hat to Gretchen who was no doubt wishing she could lock him in his room for bad behavior like she had done when he was a child, but he didn't much care. He was the richest man in Springfield and he considered himself quite gorgeous, too. After all, that was exactly why the women would fall head over heels in love with him. They tickled his fancy and stroked his ego and he could not get enough of them. Today was no different, and as he followed the lovely lady into the opera house he glanced at the carriage riding away and sighed.
Gretchen wanted nothing but the best for him and he knew she was worried that she would soon die and he would not have settled down. She was quite robust and active and was only trying to keep up with him, but he knew she was getting on up there in age. It was a fact that made him sad momentarily.
"Mr. Davidson," the doorman smiled at him and opened the curtains to the VIP lounge high above everyone else.
"Curtis," he greeted the man pushing Gretchen from his mind for the moment. "Who is that lovely woman who came in ahead of me just now?"
"Crystal?" The doorman asked pointing at the woman below them.
"Yes, she is the one. Do invite her up here to join me, will you?"
It was not a question. It was a request he expected fulfilled and so it was. Byron had been used to this life for a long time. His grandpapa had come over from Germany and had built an empire here in the south for his family. His father had made sure that his empire grew, and though many thought him to be reckless and somewhat of a spendthrift, he was anything but. Byron assiduously put the hours in to maintain what he had inherited when the fever had taken his parents from him, but he also believed that he should enjoy it. A man who was all work and no play was a sad, dull man and he would become no such thing.
"Sir," Crystal smiled at him as she was escorted to her seat beside him.
"Thank you for joining me ma’am," he smiled at the blue eyed woman who must have been the envy of many. He signalled to the footman to bring them some champagne and in a matter of minutes they had delved into frivolous conversation that left him wanting more.
Yet she was another woman who would soon prove that he would likely never take a wife from Springfield, Kansas. All the women with depth were taken or had no interest in marriage, and then there were women like Crystal, who he would have to be very inebriated to even consider. He was infatuated with her at first, like he was with many women, and now that he knew he could have her, his interest waned. He walked her home that night and promised to call on her come morning, though he knew he would do no such thing.
"You seem a bit down," Gretchen said to him as she sat at the dinner table that night.
He was indeed and he had no appetite.
"I have been thinking," he began.
Gretchen feigned surprise. "Oh my! I didn't know you did such things."
He glared at her. "I do! Just not very often."
A bout of laughter rang around the table and for a fleeting moment an appetite presented itself.
“What have you been thinking about my son?" Gretchen asked him and just as if he were a child again he found himself spilling his inner most thoughts to the woman who had come to be his mother.
"I am getting older and I would like to settle down, but no woman in this town has what I seek."
Gretchen laid her fork on her plate, clearly finished with her meal and the house maid immediately removed them from the table. "What are you looking for Byron? You have to know that first. Right now I don't think you do."
He sighed. "Am I not supposed to know it when I have found it?"
"Yes," she replied patiently, "but if you go actively seeking something then you need to know what you are looking for or you may end up settling for just about anything."
He thought about it for a while and knew exactly what he wanted. When Gretchen excused herself from the table minutes later, she dropped the day’s paper in front of him. Circled in red were three ads. All of which were advertising brides, but only one caught his eye and that was the one of a woman with a child. A child was something he had always wanted and he was hesitant about raising another man's child but he figured a woman with a child had to be more mature than the others who stated they were simply searching for love. He might not be very stable, but be was far from idealistic. Love he could learn, but a woman of depth was not easy to find.
The following morning he wrote a response by way of invitation to one Jane Cameron. He hoped she would travel to see him soon and told Gretchen of his choice. She was ecstatic and he decided that for that day he wouldn't give her anymore grief. He worked the fields and then in the evening, he entertained the Jameson’s he had been avoiding for some time. They were hopeful he would marry their rather homely daughter, though he wasn’t the least bit interested.
"Get some rest," Gretchen said to him later. She kissed him on top his head and he rose to walk her to her room. It was only then he realized just how frail she was becoming. He would make the necessary adjustments to make her the happiest she could be in her golden years.
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3
Chapter THREE
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“ It was so sad, how life could
sometimes destroy your dreams …”
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Minnesota
Three weeks later…
“Mama! Mama!” Jemma called to her from the oak tree under which she had been playing. The child only ever got this excited when something was happening and Jane had been classically conditioned to immediately think that it had to be something horrible.
“What is it, Jemma?” she rushed to her daughter’s side as the little girl smiled up at her and pointed at the postman making his way up the hill.
“We got something, Mama!”
It was with great sadness that they walked down the hill to meet the old man who delivered for them, for the only mail they had ever received were letters from John when he was away traveling. This would be no such letter and she knew Jemma would be disappointed. Every so often her daughter would ask for her father and Jane would have to sit with her and explain yet again that the man she hoped to see coming home would never again walk up those hills.
“Jane,” the postman bowed a head to her before bending to tickle Jemma and hand her a piece of candy.
“You have word for us?” Jane asked him.
He smiled. “I have a letter for you, yes ma’am. This one came all the way from Springfield, Kansas.”
Jane was confused and couldn’t think of any reason why a letter would be arriving for her from so far off. She never the less took it, casting a wary glance at the neatly scrawled letters on the front of the envelope. It was no doubt a man’s handwriting, even as neat as it was.
“Can I eat this now, Mama?” Jemma asked her and she absently nodded at the child as they walked back to the ho
use. Under the tree she sat and opened the letter, her jaw dropping as she read the invitation from Mr. Byron Davidson, owner of Springfield Ranch. He was cordially inviting her to Springfield, to meet and talk about marriage as per her mail order bride ad in the paper. The only problem was that she had not placed an ad.
“Alex,” she said out loud trying to control her anger at her meddling friend. She called to Jemma whose jaw was puffing with the lollipop she was enjoying, and the two made their way into the cottage where Alex was singing happily as she baked a pie.
“Almost done, Jemma,” she called to the little girl who eagerly ran over to her to stick a finger in the batter.
“Did you do this?” Jane asked her, angrily tossing the letter at her.
Alex eyed her with a confused raised eyebrow. It was a look that instantly turned to glee as she danced around the kitchen reading the letter.
“Oh Jane, you absolutely must go!” Alex said. “Look, he said to respond by telegraph immediately if you can make it. The office in town closes in another hour. I can ride down quickly and send word that you will come.”
“I will do no such thing!” she shouted back at Alex, a little more harshly than she intended to. “I have a child.”
Alex sighed with what little patience she could muster. “This is exactly why you need to be thinking of a better future, Jane. How long do you think cleaning floors and doing other people’s laundry will work out for you? It is barely putting food on your table, is this what you want Jemma to grow up to?”